The trumpet blowers gather at the walls of Jericho, and surround the self-regarding Captain ...

(Above: found at Crikey here).

Even as he tries to deliver his mea culpas and mend his ways, Tony Abbott manages to sound tone deaf.

You know things are desperate when the only one to lay on the regard is the one handling the trowel of self-regard:

"This is a very strong team," he said. "And one of the reasons why so many members of the team are able to perform so well is because they've got a very good captain. 
"It takes a good captain to help all the players of a team to excel." (more at the ABC here about Tony Abbott declaring himself a 'good captain').

In the old days, the pond used to be told it was the British way never to blow your own trumpet, to always be seemly and modest, and if in search of praise, let it come from others and be honestly earned.

Trumpets were there for a purpose:

So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

All blather of course, but it's profoundly ironic to see Abbott forced to blow his own trumpet because everyone else is out of breath.

It's the stuff of Shorten zingers - Titanic captains and all that - and of cartoons:

It's got so the pond can't keep up with the follies and the circus acts, and the reader comments are more agile. The newest gambit came about because everybody slowly began to realise that it was the man doing the self-trumpeting and the own goals, rather than the woman, despite the best strategic advice:

(And more Moir here).

Is there any other clown willing to join in the fun in this bit of the circus act?

Mr Billionaire irrelevance himself.

Yes everyone's in the act and in every way now Abbott remains the source of contention, an object of fascination as he writhes on the spit of anger and contempt.

And still it goes on. Just as everyone thankfully decided to give the Sir Duke saga a rest, along comes Tony Walker in the AFR this very day:

Yes, yes, they're always a bit slow at the staid AFR, but even as we attempt to git along, little dogies, the news continues weird.

What's an Abbott to do to change the look and jut of his cowl?

Yes, according to the reptiles in EXCLUSIVE mode, the 'listening' PM is about to dump his leave plan.

Of course if it had been a Labor plan, it would have been headed Gillard in excruciating backflip as policy farce collapses in a cow pat.

Oh okay, maybe the pond shouldn't be writing headers, but the point is surely correct.

This was the original 'Captain's pick' policy outing, much reviled by many, yet Abbott has clung to it tenaciously for years, and only now reluctantly, in the direst of hours, has he decided to 'listen'.

But how is this folding of the tent actually listening?

A listener would have had second thoughts the moment that Abbott devised the scheme on his own and announced it to the world.

It had Abbott's paw all over it (along with the token woman) but what are we to make of this "fair dinkum" scheme now?

Fair dinkum, it seems like it's fucked. (stroll down policy memory lane at Liberal HQ here).

What to do, what to do?

Well at last the knob polishers and forelock tuggers are starting to get back into the act.

The bouffant one has found his voice, or at least rounded up a few stragglers.

So who's he got?

Say what? A dipstick long out of the game, discarded and irrelevant, now dusted off, and dragged back into the sunshine, with Shanahan in his column recycling the thoughts of the skipping Stone?

Yep that's how pathetic it gets as the one voice, the one backer is taken up by the reptiles:

That's the counter-revolution?

Could it get any more pathetic?

Well actually it could. There was another forlorn voice urging the troops to rally around the Union Jack (with bonus Southern Cross), scribbling away in the ABC with Abbott needs backing, not the boot.

Abbott knows full well that regaining the trust of his Coalition colleagues and the Australian people is a hard road back from here. If a harsh lesson has been learned that even confident leaders should consult and listen, this month's Medicare and Philgate misadventures haven't been in vain. But surely Abbott the man deserves better than what he has endured this week after his Bishop of Bradford moment. He certainly doesn't deserve to share Edward VIII's fate. 
Schadenfreude may be pleasurably cathartic for those indulging in it. But when schadenfreude dominates our political discourse, not only Abbott has a serious problem: we all do.

Things are pretty desperate when there's a whining and a wailing, and a mourning about schadenfreude, as if Abbott's years of kneecapping, and relentless negativity should now count for naught, and everyone should rally around the stricken bully.

Harden the fuck up man. Politics is a tough game, Abbott gave it out, now he's copping it, and in policy terms in relation to the PPL, he's on the verge, according to the reptiles, of doing the most spectacular  flip flop, back flip of all.

Enjoy the spectacle, it's rare that this kind of circus comes to town for daily thrills ...

Meanwhile, in the world of Fairfax, the pond couldn't resist this juxtaposition yesterday:

The man was so tone deaf that at one time he considered his chief bromancer for a plum posting, and it was only Chris Mitchell who saved him from the folly?

And so today in Fairfax?

You can read it here, but at its heart is the fallout from that latest folly, which naturally the reptiles at the lizard Oz have given the barge pole treatment:

News of the approaches to Ms Bishop and Mr Turnbull comes after Fairfax Media revealed on Friday Mr Abbott approached The Australian newspaper's foreign editor Greg Sheridan – who has described the Prime Minister as his "best friend" in university days – take up the plum role of high commissioner to Singapore after the 2013 election. 
One cabinet minister labelled the offer "completely bizarre" and expressed shock the newspaper's editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell – a friend of Mr Abbott – confirmed to Fairfax that he had dissuaded Mr Sheridan from moving. 
Mr Mitchell said: "Obviously Greg and I are personal friends, as are Greg and Tony, so I guess the offer was probably quite attractive but he has a pretty good job at the Oz too".

There's a man who not only rewards the Royals, he thinks and acts like a Royal taking care of his mates.

There's more in the story, but the pond particularly enjoyed this bon mot from an anonymous source:

A junior minister, however, put the counterview: "Rudd was a well-liked national leader. People were shocked because they woke up one day to find that he was gone, without explanation. Nobody would call Tony Abbott a beloved national figure. No one would be surprised if we got rid of him."

Now who can argue with that impeccable logic?

And so to Queensland with the news that, according to some sources, up to thirty per cent of voters are being motivated to vote by their anger and discontent arising from the federal government, and Tony Abbott in particular. (1 in 3 according to the Currish Snail here).

Well Queenslanders will get the government they deserve, but even the Currish Snail was sounding a little nervous on this day:

Totally unfair of course. Campbell Newman could always do. He could alienate the judiciary, basic legal rights, Alan Jones, anyone interested in land care and reef care and worship coal and  ...

Feel free to add to the lengthy list at your leisure, the pond is off to watch the coverage. What fun, whatever the result ...

In which the pond discovers more amateur coaches and angry parents shouting from the sidelines than you'd find at an under ten game of soccer ...

(Above: and more David Rowe here).

There was sweet bumbler Barners, bumbling in from Tamworth, onetime centre of the known universe until they elected the bumbler to bumble for them, and in his sweet way he urged everyone, including the pond, to move on, to forget it, while giving the odd Australian salute.

Ah sweet nostalgia and memories. Look, there he is, in a spot the pond knows so well, giving it to those pesky Tamworth flies:

Barners was at his Palin-esque incoherent best, betting any number of his personal houses that we'd be all moving along, and delivering this sort of splendid insight:

BARNABY JOYCE: Yes, and the thing I like about Tony Abbott - and I've said this before - it's sometimes the mistakes that prove the authenticity of the person. And I want the authentic. I want the person who I believe is real because when they're authentic, you can trust them. We could easily grab someone from central casting and they'd have the right looks and say the right things, but when the time came to chop your toes off, that's exactly what they'd do. I'd rather the authentic, I'd rather the real and I get that with Tony Abbott.

On and on he rambled in his bumbling, ridgy didge 'chop your eyeballs out' way, and if you missed it, you can find it online here, and what a desperate world it is for 7.30 these days, when all they can get to turn up is bumbling Barners, offering this message:

Pre-nominals and post-nominals and what happened at an Australia Day award ceremony will be lost in the fish and chip wrapper where it belongs.

But the pond couldn't let it go, not just yet, and neither, it seems could the rest of the media, not if this morning's headlines count for anything. This from the AFR:

And this from the rest of the Fairfaxians:

Mark Kenny had two stabs at the story - Liberals weigh up leadership options - was one, with a change of leadership now being actively canvassed, and the other yet another hectoring sermon about how Abbott must do better, Abbott's choice: change or face the axe.

More coaching from the sidelines, more explaining how Abbott has to change.

But it wasn't just the Fairfaxians having a go. For the umpteenth time, the anon reptile editorialist at the lizard Oz had a few points to make, along much the same lines, with the frustrated coach shouting from the sidelines like a parent at a ten year old making a mess of the game:

Can you believe that sort of 'do gooder' drivel? 

Total failure in class to date, must learn more quickly, must open up dialogue with Oz editorialist teacher. Must lead robust public debate by example.

And so on and so forth. As if the 'personal indulgence' doesn't actually cut to the heart of the monarchist man who deeply believes in all the Catholic and monarchist and climate denial and science bashing kool aid he's been swallowing since childhood.

And then there was the question of the Bolter. The pond had gone to bed wondering whether the Bolter's promise to eviscerate Abbott would turn the next day into a fudge.

And indeed it was an artful fudge, with even the illustration artful, evoking as it does Abbott as a supplicant to the all-powerful bitch from hell who makes him do the weird things he does:

Yes, there's mistress Credlin dressing down master Abbott.

And then came the artful fudge, along the lines of better the totally useless devil you know, than the devil lurking in the woods, the very same justification Abbott has been using. 

I might be a dropkick, he's been arguing, but do you want to re-live the Gillard-Rudd feud? Presumably on the basis that if Abbott is given the flick, rather than doing the decent John Gorton thing, he'll do a carefully orchestrated imitation of a psychopathic former Chairman Rudd.

Blackmail by a sociopath!

To support the argument, the Bolter deployed a hearty dose of three word slogans, the hint of the forelock still in play and ready for a tugging:

He has certainly been better than Labor leader Bill Shorten promises to be, and I doubt rival Malcolm Turnbull, so verbose and prone to warming alarmism, would be any improvement if the Liberals were panicked into a switch. 
See, on the big calls on which livelihoods and even lives depend, Abbott has actually been right. 
He stopped the boats — which Labor swore couldn’t be done. 
He scrapped the punishing carbon tax — which Labor falsely claimed would save us from global warming. 
He started to rein in the exploding Budget deficit — which Labor recklessly created and won’t help fix. 
On other issues, too, Abbott has been ahead of almost everyone else likely to replace him. 
He called out Russian President Vladimir Putin for backing the Russian separatists who shot down MH17. 
He has helped lead the fight against Islamist extremism. 
He is cutting red tape, trying to raise the pension age, and is starting to urge workplace reform.

As always, it's impossible to argue with mindless stupidity and simplistic three word slogans, and what followed was more of the same, only this time bashing Labor with the same sort of nattering negativity that Abbott made his speciality while in opposition.

But then the Bolter raked over the coals once more, and the embers flickered to life, and it was yet another warning that Abbott must hoe to the right wing extremist way, or suffer the consequences:

WTF? Abbott has voices in his head? Should we know more?

So there you go Barners.

Tony Abbott is on notice. Both the Fairfaxians and the Murdochians now feel free to hector and lecture him, and every policy move will now be refracted through the question of cabinet collegiality and consultation. His PPL scheme is now but a dream, and some might even begin to examine once again the policy incoherence, which led to a price signal ostensibly to help fix the ailing budget instead being deployed on a grandiose medical research scheme.

Any further stuff-ups of this kind will be given ruthless examination - it isn't long to the next budget, highly likely to be as bad as the last one - and given Abbott's form, it seems most unlikely that somewhere down the track he won't manage to put his foot in it.

We've already got an idea of how Abbott fumbles under pressure. Remember this?

Yes, if you don't mind enduring an advertisement, you can relive that hilarious "you're not saying anything Tony" moment on YouTube here.

If Abbott has a dummy spit like this, or another brain spasm, or tries on yet another policy clearly aimed at denuding the poor and enriching the rich, it will set off the electronic graffiti, and now what's left of the mainstream media will join in and run with the hounds with a wild yahoo ...

Can Abbott change his spots? Not likely. He was always best as a boofhead attack dog, he's never shown much capacity for grace, his best years were as a fiercely negative opposition leader, and he's routinely promised to change and consult ... until the next failure to change and consult comes along ...

It's been a glorious train wreck in government, and it's likely to keep on going that way ...

Oh one last thing. Special kudos to the HUN for digging up this story, a simpering mix of colonial condescension, mixing racism with a put down of Abbott, in the quest for clicks and quaintness:

There's a lot more, but sorry no link, clicks only egg them on. You won't find the same sniggering in the HUN about Anglicans and Catholics and their straw gods ...

Meanwhile, there's an election in Queensland.

At the very moment that Annastacia Palaszczuk passed on the simplest of questions, the pond realised that the deep north was doomed, and it would surely get the government it deserved, though perhaps without Campbell Newman at its head.

Never mind Queenslanders. Where would desperate, alienated Sydney-siders be without the odd state - let's not forget Tasmania - to laugh at?

Cue First Dog, and as always, more First Dog here, and good luck tomorrow Queenslanders. The pond has a lucky rabbit's foot to sell you, and it's likely you'll need it ...

We are all Republicans now ...

David Rowe (and more Rowe here) was in fine form this morning:

Okay, let's get the reference out of the way first:

Ah the pond loves the whiff of art in the morning - and yes Greg Hunt you can wiki Fuseli here and learn more about his nightmares.

Freud before Freud, and you'd swear it was a ripe bit of Victorianism, ideally suited to the Abbott mindset, but it's actually a bit earlier than that. Still the pond will accept Credlin as a horse's head and Rupert Murdoch as a wicked, perverted gnome.

Well we all know why Rowe traipsed off into a homage to Fuseli and art.

It's all the fault of that pesky American sticking his dirty gothic fingers into domestic politics:

Uh huh. Fairness has got nothing to do with it. Cruelty, always with the cruelty and the pain ...

Patriotic duty ... on charged the five hundred, down into the valley of guns ...

As a result, the pond stays in a state of high bemusement.

As Peter Fitzgerald wondered a few days ago, where have all the monarchists gone?

It seems we all - krazed members of the kommentariat included - are republicans now, such is the hostility to the Sir Duke and all he stands for ...

As for Peta Credlin, Chairman Rupert has put Tony Abbott in a sticky spot, by joining the likes of that shrieking banshee Miranda the Devine in demanding the head of Credlin, even as it seems clear that it was Abbott's folly that led to the trouble. It was, after all, a Captain's pick, not the hapless coach dragging the kit around.

So Credlin, routinely accused of being too controlling, is now being abused for not being controlling enough, and for allowing a rampant monarchist King Kong to sir the Duke.

It's just another example of that old Freudian concept of displacement, emotional transference, where the anger that should be directed at the master is directed at the servant, because there's too much at stake in an attack on the master.

So instead the banshees howl, and it's that very old, and post Gillard routine, kill the bitch, ditch the witch, being re-enacted yet again.

But here's the rub, and the horn of the dilemma for Abbott. (how the pond loves horny dilemmas).

If he now ditches Credlin, he will be seen to be folding to his American master, and the American master's yowling tribe of hired banshees. He will be automatically judged and found wanting. So does he do a pick and stick, or does he do the ritual sacrifice? Either way he loses ...

It's as good a way to start the morning as the pond could imagine.

Here's Abbott starting off with just a dash of Anglo eccentricity and colonial fawning, thinking where's the harm, and landing deep in republican do dah.

And now it gets worse. You see, the Bolter's baaaack, and he's carrying an axe. Oh sure the blog posting is bland enough:

Very pessimistic? Column on Friday?

Well it's not hard to guess the tone of the column, because the Bolter has spoken already:

(The rest of the story, with the working links, at the ABC here).

And then there's the rest of the pack of this chattering church of latter day republicans, still carrying on, in chagrin, indignation or in warning mode, and littering the opinion pages of the reptile Oz:

Yep, there's the chief knob polisher himself, one time abject glorifier of Tony Abbott, getting indignant, and blathering on about fairness.

For some bizarre reason - perhaps a sense of decency or even an attempt to connect with honesty - the bouffant one starts off by pointing out that Abbott's folly, the knights and the dames and the sir Duke thingy - were entirely the work of Abbott, and that Credlin unsuccessfully opposed the introduction of the knightmares and the demonic dames.

So it's not Credlin's fault, but she must pay the ultimate price. Ditch the witch, kill the bitch, it's the only, the minimum way, to give a sign of true contrition.

And then with Credlin gone, and Abbott blundering on into the next pit of folly, as he surely will, what then? Will the next chief of staff be dragged up to the guillotine for a ritual sacrifice?

It's obvious enough. If anyone should fall on their sword as a result of the monarchist clap trap that infests Abbott's brain, it should be Abbott. He's the one with the worm in the rose ... or maybe he is the worm in the rose ...

As for Savva, she's not having any of the Credlin witch hunt, but since we're in Freudian mode, note first the attached illustration. Well we could be here all day if we wanted to contemplate the role of the Joker, the Jester, the super ego and the id in life, so let's just cut to the chase:

Steady. Too much Savva in one gulp can be harmful to the system. Let us note that Savva identifies, correctly, that the current folly is all the work of a foolish man, and now let us proceed in carefully measured gobbets:

Uh huh. So already the numbers are being counted, and there's at least 15 to 20 so alienated they'd vote for the likes of Mal Brough.

Speaking of the rough Brough, slouching towards Canberra, let's have a final gobbet:

Uh huh. It's on. And the ritual sacrifice of Credlin won't stay the baying of the hounds, or the quest for blood. Oh yes, let there be blood ...

Look, they're all at it. Every crazed monarchist or one time Abbott worshipper is stepping out of the closet:

Cue the magic water man:

Say what?

Oh okay, spoiler alert, there was a punchline after that:

But he cannot beat the combination of Robotic Tony and Bill Short-term.

There's more, but you know how to google. Why you might even learn, if you google, that Campbell Newman is in danger of losing his seat.

What's that you say?

Once again the pond has been reduced to passive vessel status, recycling the thoughts of the reptiles as they hammer away at the Abbott they once worshipped?

Well what else can the pond do?

Once upon a time, the pond had daily fun pillorying the Abbott lovers, and the konservative krazed right wing kommentariat, as they went about their monarchist, colonial deregulatory business, making the rich richer and the poor poorer, ensuring by legislative parry and thrust that it would be so and thus forever.

Now they're all in an uproar more rabid than the pond could have imagined.

Yes, we are all republicans now ...

And remarkably cartoonists are still finding comedy in the situation, despite the pond and First Dog's conviction that the affair was now beyond satire (and you can find the Fairfax stable of cartoonists here).

Is it now the right time for the pond to retreat to a nunnery?

From this ...

To this ...

Yes that master of the electronic graffiti artz has spoken. The man is friendless and he's so digitally illiterate he doesn't even know what it means ...

Abbott is done and dusted, gone. Now it's only a matter of time, and likely enough it won't be of his choosing, but it will certainly be of his making.

The Man, the master of the electronic graffiti artz, has already anointed the successor, the chosen one, who played private court and homage to the imperious one:

There's more at Crikey, if you can get behind the paywall, but the basic point is clear enough,.

No doubt there are some sceptics in the land - after all it's Bernard Keane, it's Crikey - but take a squiz, have a gander at the reptiles at the lizard Oz this very day.

There hasn't been this sort of uproar since Lord Monckton last hit town to warn of the black helicopters emanating from the United Nations.

Well Dame Slap's always a wild card - she's the one ready to yabber on about the black helicopters and international UN world government conspiracies in the guise of climate science - but that last one is the cruellest of all.

Not Greg "Bromance" Sheridan?! Not the bestest buddy of all?!

A kindly reader had reported that the Bromancer had turned up on that haven of inner city 'leets, the ABC in Melbourne, where cardigan wearers can be found in abundance, provided they wear black, to berate his best buddy, but the pond refused to believe it.

No way could Sheridan be a treacherous ratfink traitor to his own kind. But there he is in print! Dismayed!!

Well there's not much point in going through all of them in detail.

The splashes tell the story, which keeps on reverberating like a gong on speed.

What's even more poignant is the way the chief kool aid swiller and distiller, the editorialist at the heart of the nation, felt the need to give the Prime Moron a dressing down and a guide, and at great length:

Sheesh.

Do the word count: dismay, consternation and ridicule cannot be dismissed, genuine and lethally targeted at the nation's leader, rankle, tone deaf or worse, complacent, indifferent to the way he's enraged and bewildered many, the psychology of self-indulgence and overreach, disastrous, lack of appropriate humility, and so on and so forth.

It's just not bloody fair.

What on earth's the pond to do? What to say or scribble? There's the whole collective pack of nattering commentariat naysayer hounds in full cry on the moors!

Dennis 'the bouffant one' Shanahan, Dame Slap, the anon editorialist, and sob, oh sob, et tu, Greg "Bromance" Sheridan ...

But wait there's more of the anon editorialist.

Sheeesh, talk about prolix.

But it's clear the reptiles are desperate. They all conspired to vote for a dud, and now the dud is delivering duds, they've wheeled out the anon editorialist with blackboard and chalk to go through some basic plays, as if their coaching is suddenly going to transform the dud into a bobby dazzler. As if Jung's experiments in alchemy produced results in the matter of lead and gold...

But the key point is obvious enough.

Mr. Abbott ... has provided first rate farce as a distraction ...

Phew, at last the pond can say something.

As usual, the reptiles have got it wrong.

It's a pathetic third rate colonial farce, a tin bauble of no meaning or distinction, handed out to a long distant Royal too old to visit this country again, the Queen's consort and handbag, and soon enough ready for the big fall, by a tinpot colonial yearning for alma mater in a way which has provoked an outburst of Freudian analysis.

In all of it, the pond would like to give special congratulations to Fairfax's Lisa Cox's Doubts over Tony Abbott's justification for Prince Philip knighthood (forced video at end of link).

The dedicated Cox ploughed valiantly through all the Prince's connections to the land down under, and amongst the predictable rubble (Life Member, Athenaeum Club Melbourne), came up with some gems, such as Patron, Australian Carriage Driving Society, and Honorary Member, Sydney University Tiddlywinks Society (defunct).

The pond felt curiously reassured, remembering long and fierce tiddlywinks battles, though truth to tell, the pond's killer speciality was Pick-Up Sticks.

Oh yes, that black would be easy pickings for the pond.

But hang on, hang on, you say, how has the pond drifted from high matters of state?

Isn't the federal government still valiantly trying to fuck over higher education and make that its first duty when parliament resumes?

Hasn't the CSIRO/BOM report noted yesterday by the pond been greeted with a stony silence?

Isn't there an election going on in Queensland? Isn't it closer than expected?

What's happening in Brisbane?

Can someone google it?

Say what? WTF?

Talk about the art of distraction? Why that Jester has got it down to a T.

Aren't there more pressing matters to discuss than Tiddlywinks and Pick-Up Sticks and the country's leading Klown Kourt Jester?

Well yes, but the pond can't help a stupid homesick man derailing the public conversation with a stupid gesture that's seen him friendless apart from a few determined monarchists and eccentrics... and Kevin Andrews. And if that's his idea of sensible, pleasant company, the long absent lord help him ... next thing you know, Abbott will be hanging about with Wackford Squeers ...

Frankly the pond doesn't know what to do or how to respond.

Is it wrong to ask that, now Abbott is on the spit, at least he should be allowed to be done slowly, constantly basted in his own juices?

Or will this reduce the country to the sort of erratic idiocy its leadership offers?

How soon, contemplating the spit turning in the night air, before distracted Australians are reduced to silence, incapable of saying anything, watching in mute disbelief, the odd dribble of spittle on the lips?

Oh sure, there are some valiant cartoonists who keep trying, Like Rowe today, and as usual, more Rowe here:

But even the immortal Rowe is struggling. See how he's reduced to doing poo jokes?

Why the next thing, Rowe and the pond will have to start doing fart jokes ...

That's how desperate it's got.

We have, as the pond observed a few days ago, gone beyond satire, gone beyond sanity, into a land where conservatives are daily writing like they were hired hacks working for the pond. Instead of for the Man ...

First Dog thankfully captured the mood, and ended the need to say anything more, except that you can find the Dog at the Graudian here:

Just the cartoonists? Electronic graffiti artists and bloggers too, the pond suspects ...

Greetings from electronic graffiti land ...

(Above: some samples of electronic graffiti).

The pond is furious, alienated, disturbed, unhappy, melancholy ...

This year there was a simple plan. Drop in occasionally on the merry mirth-making of the Abbott government, laugh a little at conservative commentators, mention the occasional actual issue like climate science, and celebrate the ongoing presence of Tony the Rabbit, fearless leader and remorseless clod hopper.

Instead what happens?

Cruel stories about the impending demise of the hapless Abbott.

Oh fickle pundits. What of the pond? Whither its future? What of the cartoonists? What will they do? Bill "zinger" Shorten is remorselessly dull. Isn't the ruination of the Australian health and higher education system - and perhaps the planet thanks to climate change - a small price to pay for the daily sending in of the clowns to perform pratfalls and slapstick gags of the first water?

Even worse, what's the point of the pond trying to say something about this political Punch when there are all sorts of conservative Judys lining up to give the doofus a sharp knock on the noggin?

Is the pond just going to become a reprint machine, recycling petty abuse like the Oz editorialist, who seems to have forgotten to take the daily dose of the kool aid:

Tone deaf, high handed? They've only just realised?

And shame on shame, there was the chief worshipper in the temple, the forelock tugger supreme, the class abaser of the class, forsaking and foreswearing his idol:

But it didn't end there. The reptiles were in a kind of collective uproar, a raging of bison and buffalo:

Perhaps even worse was the way that the artless Abbott had denigrated social media.

You see, many of the reptiles are addicted to this sordid, secret, furtive, wicked vice, and they weren't happy.

Yes, the wretches had been indulging in a fine flurry of tweets and twitterings and the re-tweeting of twittish tweets:

Say what?

Et tu Chris Kenny?

Of course Kenny had to spend an equal amount of time berating knobs and lefties for agreeing with him, but who can stand in the way of a man who would have been in court every second day with Charlie Hebdo trying to score some cheap defamation dollars ...?

Anyway, by this time, the pond had given up. Everybody was doing it:

They all seemed to congregate under the hashtag joke knighthood.

And then there were the cartoonists.

What's that you say?

Today there are serious hypocrisies to be considered, as exemplified in Cathy Wilcox's cartoon?

What's that you say?

Today the CSIRO released a report containing news in relation to climate science?

The first update since 2007?

Noted in Fairfax here, but just a drop in a warming ocean up against the flood of reports about antsy Abbott's knightmare.

Oh sure you can head off to the CSIRO here to get updates, or you can head off to BOM here.

But what would be the point?

There's a climate denialist in charge of the government and the best he can do is hand out gongs to the likes of Phil the Greek, as rara an avis  example of distinguished Australianus as might be found, while that prime futtock Greg Hunt goes about hunting for walri and facts on Wikipedia.

Who knows what's happening in Queensland? Who cares? Just google it.

After all, we're all entranced by the doofus.

Ah well, you know where to find the cartoonists. At least they're still having fun, while the pond is reduced to being a recycling bin for angry, outraged members of the commentariat, as weird a turning as a flock of starlings trying out for a role in The Shining.

David Rowe is here, and the Fairfax mob are all here.

What's left, but to join in? Recycle the jokes, add to the electronic graffiti ...